001good evening it's my pleasure to call to order the september 15 2022 regular public board meeting of the school district of haverford township we will begin with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and now i'll ask ms martha cue our board secretary to call the roll dr crispin here dr king here dr larson here dr mckay here mr schwartz here snodgrass here is vitaly here mr feinberg here ms what weedman here it's nice to have everybody in attendance uh and then can we have our mission and strategic goals mission of the school district of haverford township is to educate and to inspire a community of lifelong
002learners who become well-rounded global citizens the pillars of educational system are our school environment is safe nurturing excellence in education is a shared responsibility and partnership with all district and community members whole child development is vital to our educational system supports and conditions exists whereby all students have opportunities to grow and excel in the areas of academic technical and career and social emotional learning our decision making process is student-centered and student voice is valued and our 2020 2025 district goals are social emotional wellness with the aim of producing a community of empathetic and resilient learners with skills to socially and emotionally flourish to prepare contemporary citizens to modernize and expand learning experiences to prepare students as critical thinkers problem solvers innovators and designers within a complex global society and third diversity and inclusion to establish
003a culturally diverse and inclusive educational experience that develops socio-cultural proficiency thank you the next item on the agenda is uh for the minutes i will accept a motion to approve the official minutes from the september 1st 2022 regular public board meeting weinberg moved first in second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed the minutes are approved and now we get to return to um one of our favorite items of every agenda that had been suspended for the summer um a report from our students and we'll start with our haverford middle school reporter mia or bianca salerno hello school board thank you for having me here today it is such an honor it feels exceptional being back at school now as a seventh grader new friends new teachers and the same
004amazing middle school so now i'd like to tell you all about it the new school year was flooded with positivity and wonder oh flood that reminds me we experienced a heavy downpour of rain on the first day of school but we made it anyways the first day of school was a blazing success oops blazing also too soon we had an unexpected fire drill but we also made it i'll hold off on any more unintended puns and just get to the point we got new bus schedules power outages throughout the district you know a normal first week of school but normal does not fit my description of starting seventh grade in fact it was extraordinary all my teachers were welcoming kind and patient they introduced us to the material that we will be learning throughout the
005year while also doing fun getting to know you activities i think i speak for all my peers when i say that 7th grade looks like a fantastic year in the midst of starting school and all the excitement it's always a good idea to be reminded of school expectations which is why detective flynn from the haverford police department reviewed everything we need to know in order to be a good student community member and individual thank you detective flynn for your time fall sports are starting off with a bang i'll cue myself with a drum roll to introduce hms's brand new tennis team vi double-a sports just got one team stronger girls will play in the fall and boys in the spring the team will surely serve greatness get it serve tennis deserving greatness i'm on a
006roll with puns today maybe i should start a puns are awesome club well technically i could since information about after school activities was distributed this week and those clubs and activities will begin next week thank you so much for allowing me to speak today and i hope that you have a puntastic evening thank you so much what a great report of a good start to the school year at the middle school thank you and now um i'll introduce from our haverford high school mia dewald who um i will say i saw in the hallways last night helping to guide me around for back-to-school night well i wish i had puns in mind but unfortunately i don't um but good evening everyone my name is mia dewald and i am now a senior at haverford high
007school thank you for allowing me the time to speak tonight with staff and students returning to the building last week for the first day of school hallways were once again bustling with life last week freshmen sophomores and juniors donned their brightest smiles for picture day seniors had their pictures over the summer and i couldn't be happier with how mine turned out as much as we all loved our summer break it was so nice to be able to see old friends and meet our new teachers i'm currently taking ap microeconomics with mr bruno ap literature with the fabulous mr mullen ap environmental science with miss olikowski an orchestra with the new teacher miss kang i am very excited to learn all about these new subjects and i'm even more excited to be in the new music
008wing the classrooms are beautiful they actually have windows now which is so fun and although we're still getting settled we have so much more room to play now continuing back to school night was just last night i did see miss wiedemann in the hallways and that gave parents an opportunity to tour the school and meet all of the teachers that their children will be spending the semester with haverford's sport teams have certainly been starting off the school year right friday night lights is officially back in the marching band and cheerleading teams have been doing an excellent job at the games volleyball field hockey cross country tennis and soccer have all had sweeping victories this week congratulations to them and fingers crossed that our winning streak continues while clubs are giving students a week to get
009settled before regular meetings begin interest meetings are slowly popping up as everyone gets ready for the annual activity fair which will give students a chance to peruse all of the different extracurriculars haverford has to offer this year i'm an officer for student senate model un and the national honor society and will be participating in drama club world affairs club and science academy with school back in session the beautiful new wing almost complete and students ready to give it their all on and off the field we can't wait to see what this year has to offer thank you for allowing me time to speak thank you and i don't know how you do it all right the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report and tonight we have our assistant superintendent jen saxa thank
010you so much good evening everyone it's hard to uh follow these two acts right here i don't know if i have any puns either but i'll see what i can work in i think as you heard the students share with us um that over the past two weeks we've all been really excited to welcome students back into the buildings students and staff have all expressed just a feeling of comfort with the familiarity of the way the school year has begun this year it's sort of like this is what we know about school and we know how to do it and uh we're excited to be here and although there were first day jitters certainly uh there's really just a sense of joy in the classrooms and and lots of smiles uh even lasting into this
011week which you know that's saying something uh so we're very happy uh to have everyone back and and everyone's getting reacquainted and adjusted again you may have noticed a change in the level of traffic that's out there as our buses have officially hit the roads we know that our school buses actually bring students to and from 139 school buildings so not just our own but also schools within our 10-mile radius and in some instances where there are special arrangements uh outside of that 10-mile radius um so it always takes a couple of weeks just to get all of the routes ironed out and make sure all the bus stops are exactly what they need to be our transportation department is is almost there and just wanted to express their appreciation for all of our families
012and the staffs patients as we get all of that ironed out uh in our first couple of weeks this school year um we are also happy to return some to some more sort of regular events uh as a board where our um the board will meet in its committees as our regular schedule again so we've had several of those meetings over the past six weeks or so um you're also going to see lots of positions as we continue to fill them on the board agenda this evening including coaches assistants full-time and substitute teachers and an administrative position we are pleased to bring forward this evening a candidate to fill a position that was actually recommended by pde in the past the director of safety and security um in the past or formally we have distributed
013these duties of someone in this position across all of the administrators so each people people took different parts of that role but as our student population has increased and our responsibilities have increased we now believe that it's best housed in one position and so we are excited to learn more about that candidate later in the meeting this evening additionally as you heard discussed a little bit we are excitedly anticipating the establishment of several new clubs and some sports like tennis not only at the middle school but also at the elementary school so last year around budget season we talked about wanting to create some more club opportunities for our youngest students as well as for our middle and high school students and our staff is now busily getting organizing and finding out what students are
014interested in and and preparing to make that a reality this school year so we're excited about that um also very exciting um our high school students had today was the first day they got to get into the fitness center the brand new fitness center and i have to tell you we got a picture like they're in there there were about you know there were a bunch of kids in there making a lot of use of it um and so we heard just the same same kind of sentiment that mia shared with us it's just beautiful to be in a new space it's all new equipment there's turf on the floor on one side it's just really exciting to see um what this board has authorized and our community has patiently waited for uh come to
015fruition that way and finally i just want to say welcome back uh to our speakers we so much appreciate hearing from bianca and mia and all the student speakers we've missed hearing your perspective and welcome it again uh at our meetings so so that officially concludes my remarks i'm happy to go forward and introduce our speakers okay great so you may have noticed we have a few extra folks in the audience this evening i am happy to introduce representatives from the delaware county community college who are here to share an update on upcoming projects and available programming uh to do so i'm actually going to turn this over to the president of a delaware county community college dr l joy gates black thank you so much for being here this evening oh thank you so
016much for having us you know as i was driving down the eagle i said it's been a while since i have been over here this last two and a half years really reminded us of how much we appreciate the opportunity to get together and to tell you what's going on at the college i brought some some uh peers with me this evening and i don't know do i need to advance it okay hopefully i do this right which one okay all right um you know it was so wonderful i have to echo listening to the students because it's been exciting at the college as well to see people back on campus we've got shuttle buses running between our locations here in delaware county we've got school buses coming to let students off who are doing
017dual enrollment and so seeing students in the hallways in the cafe sitting out on the lawn doing it reminds us we're finally getting back to a sense of normalcy and we really are looking forward to having that tonight we're going to tell you a little bit uh of an update on a number of things but i brought with me tonight dr harry costin who's chief of staff and and vice president of strategic planning miss rachel mccoslan she's one of our newer team members she's vice president of institutional advancement and she'll share with you some information um on our capital campaign dr mitchell murtha he is our vice president of recruitment and enrollment management he'll talk about enrollment and dual enrollment and some of the guided pathways that we have for students and then lastly dr
018patricia benson vice president for finance and administration she is here with us for support dr benson wave your hand so we are here to provide you with an update and we really appreciate the invitation to come back the first thing we're going to talk about and i'll i'll kind of lay the groundwork and then i'm going to turn it over to dr costigan is an update on our new southeast campus this has been a labor of love for me we have began these conversations about four years ago and even throughout the pandemic we continued to work steadily with pde and other funding sources to bring this closer to fruition i am pleased to say that we are very close uh we are hoping to get the final uh authorization from pde by the end of
019september the first of october so exciting times it's taken a long time but that community is going to really get a huge piece of history that's going to continue to be an educational institution some of you may have seen it on the news where people who had been alumni of prindi were coming back and getting pieces of the building memorabilia so we're just glad that it's going to continue to be an institution of higher education so with that harry i'll let you come up and talk more about what's going to happen in the building and then we'll he'll turn it over to mitch and then i'll come back with any questions harry okay you know as dr gates black said we understand that this building is very important to the community um and has strong
020historical ties and and and strong ties um to so many people who have gone through this building over the years uh so we knew that it was important to protect it uh and to keep what we could um so the facade will stay as is it will be refreshed it will be repaired it will be updated but the uh the facade that has become so important to so many people that look will remain but as you can imagine in a building this old it is not ada compliant so what you see here uh the glass tower in in the forefront that is where we will construct a new entrance and what that will provide is an elevator tower which will then provide access to every floor in the building but we also are trying to
021even though it is a brand new structure uh we decided to go with glass so that it is transparent so you can still see into the building uh without obstructing we we the goal here is to not obstruct the the historical facade that everybody has come to cherish over the decades here you see the back of the building with a courtyard to the right is what we would call the annex that will house a couple different things one being a workforce um and development center so uh some skilled trades are going to be located in this building but also a community center part of the mission of delaware county community college is of course to serve the community and dr gates black is very strong in reminding people that we are the community's college so
022that community center will offer many different types of services and referrals to the members of the community and they can take advantage of that things like open computer labs advocacy centers uh tax preparation assistance that will also be available through the community center that we plan for the new building and then again the courtyard in the back allows for a green space for our students faculty staff and community uh and again in just like we need to do um create a new entrance in the front there will also be a new entrance created in the back uh again we are trying our best to minimize having something that looks so modern so this will be a glass structure that again allows you to see into the building so even though it is new you still
023get a sense of looking into the past by having this glass structure this is an outdoor courtyard this would be right off the area of the cafeteria so students faculty staff have the ability to go outside to enjoy fresh air to enjoy that green space and to have ample seating particularly during the the nicer months of the year a view of a rent rendering of the main entry showing you what it may look like both the initial level and the mezzanine again though we are protecting the facade and historical outside of the building as you can imagine in a building this old it needs quite a bit of renovation and improvement uh so the inside itself will be completely gutted um and a new modern space will be created on the inside this is a
024view of what we call our learning commons or the college library again you will see um not only uh space um throughout the the learning commons but you also might notice in the background there individual rooms so that students have a place where they could go um a glass enclosed but private space work place where you can work quietly without distraction uh we think that that is important for students to have this is the servery so this is the area that then would lead out to that courtyard that i showed you what you don't see that would be here to the right would be our cafeteria for students but also for the first time in its history the college will have its own teaching kitchens so we have a very rich culinary program but unfortunately
025the college does not have its own teaching kitchens so we rent space at other facilities in order to to accommodate that program this will allow us this new building allows us state-of-the-art culinary and teaching kitchens which we think will then allow that program to grow tremendously i have a background not working as a chef but in chef education and culinary education in a previous college one thing the chef director told me is people eat no matter what when people are sad they eat when they're happy they eat when they celebrate they eat so uh booming industry always culinary and one that we expect to grow tremendously by having our own kitchens again another look at the learning commons with space for students to work many of our students unfortunately don't have laptops don't have computers
026at home though we do have a laptop loan program and we also provide students with the ability to get internet access at no cost to them if needed but of course students can also come to the learning commons and have the ability to to work at a computer if they do not have one at home or if they just want to work at a computer while they are in in at the college for the day and just an example of what a typical classroom would look like again what one thing the building does have is incredible natural light uh you know hallway after hallway of windows and which will then of course be something that we are able to preserve the windows will be new but we will be able to preserve that for the
027students one of the things that we are most excited about is the early childhood education center this will be a standalone brand new building that is being built on the property the ymca of eastern delaware county will actually be in charge of this building it will provide child care not only for students faculty and staff but also for residents and then what we will also have here with our early childhood education program is there will be classrooms that our early childhood education majors will be able to to use and they will be with young children so this will take our early childhood education program to a whole new level and again in in partnership with the y we expect um to be offering a great service to the residents with a fantastic child care program
028and parking parking is important but we also did not want to have a parking garage that was an eyesore or that obstructed the view of the building in any way so this parking facility actually the facade of the parking garage mimics the facade of the uh prendergrast building so that we can you know try to to simulate that so that it looks um as if it belongs there and you will see that the parking actually drops below level so that we did not build a parking garage that went up two or three stories this is something that will provide parking without obstructing the view we we don't want an eyesore for the residents and we also don't want to block that beautiful building and with that i will turn it over to rachel mccausland who
029is our vice president for institutional advancement good evening everybody so um one of the really exciting initiatives we have going on at the college right now that will largely support this project is our building community campaign this is a comprehensive campaign we are currently in the silent sort of leadership phase of this campaign seeking early funding for it and um this will be a seven and a half million dollar campaign two million of which has been secured to date um the campaign priorities a breakdown of of those funds five million dollars of that will support the new southeast campus a million dollars of that will go towards workforce development another million dollars in support of student access and success this is things like scholarships those kinds of things uh and five hundred thousand dollars toward
030our uh diversity equity and inclusion efforts um this campaign is really focusing on supporting six of our really high priority industry sectors some of which dr costigan just touched on those being healthcare advanced technology the skilled trades culinary hospitality is as you heard about and also early childhood education which you heard about followed by general business and these are sectors where we are seeing a lot of demand from students for programs so as you might imagine we're terrifically excited about about um about this new building and we are seeing really early um interest and support for this campaign so we're we're quite excited about it um there's more information about it that i handed out earlier just just so you have it and with that i will turn it over to dr mitch martha good
031evening so i wanted to provide a little bit of context in terms of the numbers of individuals from your school district who are participating in our programs at the college so up on the screen here you see individual head count from individuals from your school district over the past several years i noticed recently there was a snafu with reporting for 22. so i apologize for that that number is actually 240. so it's been relatively consistent in terms of participation uh for enrollment in our programs and our courses uh from your school district next is a numbers related to dual enrollment so if you're unfamiliar dual enrollment uh is essentially individuals who are enrolled at the high school currently uh mostly junior seniors who are also taking courses at the college and again fall 2022 should
032actually be nine as opposed to three i apologize for that uh but again relatively consistent in terms of the number of high school students who from your high school who are currently taking courses at the college some additional context from the school district the number of graduates individuals who graduated from the community college uh as you can see there it was 73 back in 1920 jumped up to uh 90 for 2021 and back down to 57 for 21.22 and this is a pretty natural fluctuation in terms of graduates depending on the year and different factors that are happening and this is a list of numbers as far as individuals who attended the community college from the school district who transferred out the majority of our programs are transfer programs uh we do have several uh
033workforce and economic development and associate applied science which really are terminal degrees where students can start working as soon as they graduate but a large proportion of our students do transfer following attendance at the community college the last thing i wanted to discuss a little bit is is dual enrollment so dual enrollment actually has been really booming for us the past year or so in fact this year compared to last year overall participation in dual enrollment has increased by 28 percent uh part of that i believe is because of the pathways which i'll i'll discuss in a moment but if you're unfamiliar there are actually three modalities of dual enrollment that we offer uh the first one is open dual enrollment so your students right now that are participating in dual enrollment uh are actually
034in and part of our open dual enrollment which means that they are taking courses that high school graduates would be taking so they're sitting side by side with high school graduates taking courses uh at during whatever time they're able to take those courses and they can register for anything in which they meet the prerequisites for uh just a sampling from the individuals from your high school as far as themes so they're taking business courses they're taking english courses history communication so the majority of them are taking just very general courses that can be used if they continue at the community college or if they decide to move on to a four-year school once they complete high school and somebody who is obviously smarter than me is taking calculus 2 as a high school student so
035kudos to them that would not be me so the second modality as far as dual enrollment is college in the high school this is relatively popular with some school districts where actually courses college-level courses are taught physically in the high school more often than not what we'll do is we will actually have a high school teacher who volunteers who has a master's degree in the field that they're looking to teach and there might be a group of 14 to 20 some odd students in the high school who are taking these courses and it usually is up to the school district so it's always up to the school district if you want to offer high school credits for that course in addition to college credits or just allow those students to get college credits for those
036courses and last but not least our academic pathways which we've been doing for the past several years and in my opinion they're growing in popularity and this is one of the examples our business academy pathway so i apologize it's a little bit difficult to see up on the screen there but the example here for the business academy pathway would be for high school juniors to start taking these courses at the community college and if you can see up on the screen the first half of their junior year the way we have it scheduled is students would be able to earn six credits by taking personal and career development as well as intro to information technology the days and times there are are placeholders some school districts like to have their students take courses early in
037the day on certain days of the week others prefer that students take courses in the afternoon and you can see a lot of times uh if not all of the time our courses for these pathways end at about 1 30 2 o'clock so students can actually come back on campus and and participate uh in activities that are happening after school so in this pathway second half of junior year students are taking intro to business and macro economic principles which would be another six credits and then the following year they would get an additional 12 credits in their senior year there is an opportunity for students to participate in these pathways act or this specific pathway in their senior year they would just take the first half of it versus the the entire thing and the
038beauty of this is they're able to transfer those credits to a four-year institution whether they continue for the associate's degree at delaware county or go right to the four-year institution following high school graduation another example and uh we have several examples but i know where our time is limited is is teacher academy pathway so this is a pathway that is near and dear to our hearts and potentially yours we do know that there's a national teacher shortage so we're trying to do our part to try to educate the next uh group of teachers so this is actually a one year pathway so high school seniors could take introduction to teaching and english composition we also have field observation built into that as well and they would earn six credits in the first half of their
039senior year and then the second half of their senior year they would get seven credits and you can see teaching with technology primary grade lab and seminar and another field work requirement one school district is actually guaranteeing that students from their school districts who complete this academic pathway once they get their bachelor's degree their teaching certificate they're guaranteeing a job interview for them at their home school district for a position so hopefully they can come back to their school district and teach at that time and we can't forget about the trades so the trades are actually they're booming right now so this is one of our uh the workforce and economic development is our division that has the most growth in the past year or two we're seeing that this is actually a national trend
040which is fantastic an example that we have is the carpentry pathway so similar to the business academy this is actually two years if students were to participate in the entire thing and it would be 17 credits in their junior year and then 13 credits in their senior year again if they decide to just start with their senior year they would work on those 17 credits completion of this entire program gets them a certificate so once they graduate high school they will have this certificate they actually can start working in the field as soon as they graduate one of the benefits is they're going to get a leg up from individuals who maybe are starting to take courses after high school they're doing it while they're in high school and are employable much sooner another opportunity
041for them is to again stay at delaware county community college for the associate's degree uh and then also as an example we have a an articulation agreement with bloomsburg university so if individuals are looking to get a bachelor's degree they will be able to transfer these credits fully to the bachelor's degree as well again we have additional examples we just wanted to share these three tonight but more than happy to share some additional examples at any time if all of you are interested and with that we welcome any questions that anybody may have for us thank you mitch does anyone have any questions for myself or members of the team questions from the board no no i just want to say this seems amazing it's i'm so impressed and i love what you're what you're
042doing with the building my now 13 year old son was inside pretty about two years ago and he described the conditions i wish he could see your slides that sounded like he was in a house of horrors like when he was in there when he said how and i had a friend who had been there at the time and it's it sounds like it's in terrible terrible shape but it's got wonderful bones it's got wonderful bones but that you kept the outside i i greatly appreciate that and like you said i'm sure a lot of the community does and i'm really excited for this thank you well we're excited we had no idea how many printy alums were actually teaching and working at the college and have come out from the community as well so
043a lot of people are interested in in seeing this building and that that particular campus come online it's just very exciting yes um i have a question um and i don't know if this is for our team or your team but um how are these i mean these are really really um great opportunities for our students um you know they're very lucky to have this you know right down the road for them and to get started on college credits in our high school and um i guess how are these sorts of opportunities communicated to our students um and you know presented to them you know these different pathways i think you know are are fascinating and and i think you know students would be interested in them so just sort of give an idea of
044of how these are communicated and sort of presented to our students as opportunities you want to come up and talk about the team we have uh an admissions team that also has a dual enrollment component so they go out and work with different high school guidance counselors so um what tends to happen is if there is interest from the school districts we would start that open that line of communication and then be able to present all the different options uh exactly now how they are presented to the high school students i'm not quite sure but i do know that we do have a wonderful team who would be more than happy to come out and have these conversations separately we can also have the conversations with anybody from the high school or the school district
045to determine what might make sense in terms of getting that relationship uh broadened and i will also say that i as well as others have jumped on zoom calls over the last year and a half talking to superintendents to talk about what it is they'd like to do and then identifying the right people to be on the call with them what is their interest what are they looking to explore allied health and nursing and other kinds of of opportunities so really it's it's what the school wants to explore yeah and representatives from delaware county community college always give generously of their time they come and do visits in in our school building as many uh colleges do we also have meetings with seniors it's typically in our district seniors who participate in dual enrollment but
046we do have sort of our senior meeting this is one of the items at that senior meeting and our counselors work with students who are looking for this type of opportunity i have to say i spoke with mr donaghy just in anticipation of this presentation and i wish i could accurately express his excitement at the idea of having a site what really feels like down the street right to us and um how uh we really believe that that will make a big difference for students being able to attend just to fit in the commute back and forth into our schedule um and to um just to see it you know you can actually see it it's it part of your community so um i'm sure that although we already do present this to seniors we
047may see an uptick in interest as the facility comes online i have to believe and as you heard mitch say dual enrollment is growing and we would love to have more students from the haverford school district as well we are seeing even non-sponsoring school districts like marple coming to us now and saying we want to find out more about this and so we really are open to any ways that we can help to get this in front of more of the parents at haverford yeah it sounds like something that would be helpful as the students start to map out their high school careers thinking i have of it not just in the senior year but ahead of time so that they can start to figure out what blocks of time that they can commit to
048this um did you mention when the new building is scheduled to get started and maybe um i can't i can't really say it yet until we get more information from pde but we're hoping to get hopefully a green light this fall okay yes that's and that's very exciting for us so hopefully we will know more i think most of you have gotten an invitation to our school district appreciation dinner that's coming up on october 12th um i hope to have more information for you at that event so you should have gotten an email please rsvp we would love to have you this will be the first in-person dinner we have had since um october of 2019. so it's just good to be back on campus yes my understanding that 10 years ago pennsylvania colleges were
049turning out about 20 000 new teachers a year and that it's down to about 6 000 at this point and my question is if a student goes through your teacher preparation pathway what arrangements would there be in terms of uh if they want to continue on and get their bachelor right we are able to we do not have a teacher education program other than our early childhood education but we do have partnership with westchester university and we have a joint admission program with them i don't know if you're aware of that where students enroll with us for their first year and if they complete their associate's degree with us they are guaranteed transfer they're guaranteed housing they are guaranteed transfer scholarships so this is a way for us to work together to do it gone
050are the days when community colleges and universities all work separately we all have to work together because that's how our students move through they don't just move through in the straight line anymore we have to provide them with alternatives and creative ways to get there well thank you for coming this has been very well it's been a pleasure exciting thank you thank you i also want to comment on the teacher academy pathway i think that's so critical and i appreciate your responsiveness to this um dire situation the shortage um i'm hopeful that you know i know upper darby is a district that is looking into you know um offering job interviews to students who go through the program and then i believe earn a bachelor's and then come back to their home district and apply
051um which i was so excited to hear about i hope you know haverford can explore ways that we can also support um getting out of this teacher um teacher shortage that we are facing um because i mean going down a few years a decade from now like i think we're going to be in a not great place if we don't address these things now i'm hopeful that as this program grows i'm i'm hopeful it'll be successful um that there could be additions for maybe world language um course offerings since world language is in an even worse situation in terms of certifications being awarded um you know math instruction different areas so i i'm very excited to follow this program and see where it goes so we look forward to it and we would be open
052to having continued conversations about where the needs are because we won't know everything so absolutely it's a partnership yeah i was really pleased to see um your your six priorities i mean those those are exactly the areas i would have thought of you know just knowing what i know about what's going on in the job market um so that was really great and i love that um that you have the early childhood education center because there's also a shortage of early childhood education teachers but also a shortage of child care for students who need it so they can go to school and i don't know if you know but recently early childhood education teachers has been added to the high demand occupation list here in pennsylvania so everybody recognizes that there is a need yeah
053and so i i'm excited to be partnering with the ymca to to enhance the number of child care openings available but also to create that learning lab for our students as well i think it's wonderful i think that's such a creative way to to work towards solving that problem so i think it's really great idea yeah thank you and just a note that i know the focus of this presentation has been on some of the overlap of programs that our high school students can take advantage of but um the community college is there as we are heard throughout the for the whole community and you don't have to be a high school student to be checking it out but anyone who's looking to enhance their skills or maybe transition into a new field it's a
054great resource here in our backyard and soon to be getting even closer and more accessible to haverford township you know and a lot of people don't know that even on our marvel campus we have a career link on our campus that works closely with our workforce development division so great opportunities for incumbent workers or people who've been displaced homemakers that want to go back into the workforce what have you thank you thank you so much thank you the next item on our agenda is the time for public comment for items on the agenda and we had no one sign up in advance so then we are on to item five the board committee report we had one um committee meeting the finance and facilities meeting on which dave schwartz will report all right thanks a
055lot so the finance facilities um committee meeting was held on september 8th went through a few with a few items there the first one is a technology issue um we are moving from our our absence programs from safe arrival to program called school pass um there's a presentation of information located in in a board docs i'll give you some of the executive summary items from that reason for it to change is school pass has had me more options than safe arrival it's linked to powerschool there's an app to report absences um there are um there's a campus movement dashboard and there's a lot more just better overall program to um to to to utilize more information coming out to to parents about that there'll be a short gap in between the um the the sunset
056if you will of safe arrival and the opening of a school pass during that time we'll be using the the old school i'll use quotes there of email to report offices um that'd be very short yet but but it's more to um more to come on um on that transition construction updates a couple of um updates for for for this overall for linwood um we have i think we have one invoice come in but no but no major changes we are literally waiting for the grass to grow for closing that one out um dcc uh the conservation um district has to sign off on it once once that that that gets um once that begins to grow we finished about eight hundred and forty thousand dollars under budget which is phenomenal especially considering covid and
057all the disruptions with the supply chain so that's extremely good news um for for linwood so hopefully that will be closed out completely pretty soon high school phase one budget was closed that was done the what what little money was left in there is moved on to high school phase two that happened during high school phase two in the month of august things are mostly wrapped up a couple of things we're still waiting for is the partition for the workout room uh some some um some trays for our green roof doors and floors those kind of things some minor pencils minor punch list issues um as one of the board members found out that dr mckay i believe we'll be remembering some rooms for example so we can find things a little bit easier that's
058one of the potential items but um there'll be a couple things happening there um over the next couple of um of a week's probably be close probably an opportunity to close it out next month once some of these items arrive once some of these things get done mostly punchless items um and fishing touches so so that is also good news moving on to um oh there are some change orders also for the for four phase two some change orders a lot of those um a lot of them are being voted on this evening some of these things are things that you just find when you do construction we find a column that needs to be replaced there's some keyboard wiring that had to be changed i'm not going to in too many details but those
059items are available um tonight to um to look at for chatham and coopertown a lot of work also was done in august for um for these schools the as you as you may remember the materials for the hvac systems are um still on back order and they'll arrive in the nick of time in november but we need ac but i'll be here for the spring at least um so that's coming in the the heaters are in the boilers are are in lighting's in some things are still being done in the um in in nine student areas fencing piping that kind of thing so that would be continuing on as i reported on last time we had at the middle school one of the um cooling towers motor for it had um had gone on the
060fritz and august 22nd we lost but one tower was still working on the 22nd that one blew so for a while the middle school had no ac fortunately jr and his team were able to get some emergency motors are called severe motors and those were installed on august 26th though so the middle school thankfully did have air conditioning when school started new orders have our new motors have been ordered one of them will be installed on 26th the other one will be installed uh when it arrives good news is is that now we have we'll have those two new motors in our clothing towers and two spares so that if one does go on and puts again we'll have something there about immediately and not risk losing a safe um we also had an update
061on some of the feasibility assessments being performed by um crabtree doing a lot of work looking at floor plans building stats um facility conditions structural conditions doors and windows five and ten year plans for all the schools come up with costs to maintain what we have and some costs to to modernize going into the kind of new generation of learning away from the modern or from the old kind of classroom by classroom measure to a new more flexible system they'll go through a lot of those options for us when we when we finished or you know as we finish the feasibility assessment but also with information that we asked for on uh solar i'll i'll have a lot of good information on on on where those might be and where inflation might be able to
062be put in found some good opportunities especially on linwood as we've been discussing and cooper town uh we are going to be continue to to to to look at that as the assessment goes through and we're going to get some more information from crabtree regarding potentially um issuing some kind of our piercing some kind of uh offering for for solar arrays so that's going to be that the thing that'll be coming out over the next couple of um of weeks and months and more information is available the crab tree presentation i thought was very very good a lot of figures pictures which engineers like so i enjoyed looking at it and um i'd like you to uh to to took it through if you have any if you have any any more interest and any
063questions i'd be happy to try to address them all right yeah and those um presentations and the meeting itself is recorded and available on the website all right the next item of the agenda is uh the section on finance and facilities so we'll hear some of the things that mr schwartz just presented on but the first item is item a the bill list i will accept a motion to approve disbursements from the following funds is listed snodgrass moved towards the second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed the list is approved item b is change orders i will accept a motion to accept the recommendation of project architect kcba and associates inc and owners representative cb development services inc and authorized the change orders totaling one hundred thirty three thousand
064two hundred thirty three dollars forty eight cents as listed short second moved and seconded any discussion uh only just to add that we did discuss several of these specifically at the meeting so um you know like miss wiedemann said it's available for view and uh we had our um um our contractor there to discuss it with us so thanks yep our owners rep our sdp development services i did that presentation thanks any other comments all in favor aye any opposed change orders are approved item c is the coopertown roof replacement phase two i will accept a motion to approve owner's representative cb development in coordination with mark j sobeck roofing consultant to prepare the bid specifications and advertising for the second phase of the cooper town roof replacement project to be bid later this month
065shorts moved crispin second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes item d is for school pass attendance and visitor platform i will welcome a motion to approve the purchase of school pass a k-12 platform to manage attendance and visitors for a three-year term as listed below king moved crisp and second moved and seconded did any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion passes in item seven of the agenda uh item a is leave or that's for human resources item a is leave of absence i will accept a motion to approve the following leave requests okay move worse than second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor all right any opposed motion is approved item b is for retirements and resignations i will welcome a motion to
066accept the following retirement and resignations as listed second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion passes item c is for appointments i will welcome a motion to approve the following appointments as listed below contingent upon receipt of all necessary clearances including act 168 of 2014. crispin boob larsen second moved and seconded any discussion long list of bus drivers moving from part-time to full-time which is very exciting to see i was glad to see that and a short list of a very short list of retirements and resignations so i think we're like heading and it seems like we're heading in the right direction we've been yeah it's great it was great to see yeah it's great that we were able to to to to still hire in this environment it's an
067extremely competitive environment for for teachers and bus drivers as we've learned so love seeing this and also that so many of our part-time bus drivers are now moving into full-time roles that's exciting that's good yeah a lot of effort on behalf of the uh district to recruit and interview and then to hire this talent so thank you for all those efforts any other discussion all in favor all right any opposed the motion is approved and i think we have an opportunity to welcome a new administrator dr mundos and a plug for food service helped too if we might as well take the opportunity to do that as well so thank you good evening mr saxa school board members administration and haverford community i have the great pleasure of introducing mr joseph mcconney as our first
068director of safety and security for the haverford school district a little bit about joe joe has been a resident of havertown for the past 30 years where his children have attended the haverford school district joe's current role is right here in our district as a security officer in the middle school joe has also worked as a food service driver for our school district joe has also 25 years of experience in the pennsylvania state police in various positions during the interview process joe provided examples how he's built positive relationships with our students teachers and administrators we look forward to joe expanding on those relationships in this new and very important role joe your experience with the state police along with your experience in our school district makes you a great fit for this position welcome joe
069and congratulations we also have a goody bag here for you thank you welcome not to the district but to your new role section eight of our agenda is concerning pupil services and item a is an out-of-district educational contract i will accept a motion to approve the following educational contract for a student attending out-of-district placement for the 2022-23 school year okay move larson second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion is approved in the curriculum and instruction portion of the agenda item a wilson language training i will accept a motion to approve the agreement totaling 12 000 with wilson language training for professional development in the area of literacy foundations larson moved crisp and second moved and seconded any discussion can we hear a little bit more about how wilson is
070implemented um you know either in our classrooms or with our teachers sure thank you for the question uh the wilson um language is providing services um for to train our teachers in the area of fundations uh which is a program that is used in all of our k 1 2 and 3 classrooms what that is really a focus on phonics a focus on foundational language including you know phonemics and letter sounds and i'm sure all this will sound familiar to a few of our audience members here uh we have echo the owl does that bring any bells uh and so what's happening here is we've had foundations at the k and one level for many years we just introduced it at the second grade level two years ago and the third grade level last year
071so we are focusing some training um specifically for uh you know those grades so that we have a representative come in see some of the teaching that's happening model some teaching talk through the decisions that are made while actually teaching and then um following up on making sure that we know how to follow up as a result of that training so uh it's a really comprehensive training program and and we hope to continue with this type of training throughout and we're excited to uh try and start it now with your approval of course thank you it gave me a little bit of a flashback what that goes from like hey apple i mean i had the first grade i was like oh i'm going back there but it's an amazing compared to what my older
072two sons had this who did not have that i it's a it's a wonderful program and i i think it's better than what we did have with my oldest and i'm i'm very excited to see we're still using it any other comments just sitting here tea top tough i know i know it's the first one i know right i know i know it i know it's good i love it oh it's been it's been a good program um yeah it's been good you're a living yeah i'm living it yeah i'm living it and it's been good i'm i'm enjoying it so i'm happy to have this on our agenda all right all in favor all right any opposed motion is approved the next portion of our agenda is on policy item a is the second
073reading of policy 901 communications and 901ar i will accept a motion to accept the second reading of policy 901 communications and 901ar larson moved stargrass second moved in second and now just clarify that ar is administrative regulations um i'll just i'll introduce this a little bit there haven't been any changes between the last meeting and this one for policy 901 this is a communications policy i went into it in a little bit of detail at our last meeting and then um prior to that it was discussed at the policy committee meeting both of those are available to view um and had um i think very good discussions on what we were looking for from our communications policy um and really this policy shows again nothing's been changed from the last reading in this reading um
074but it the focus is on having a clear poli communications plan for the district and so this really instructs the um the superintendent and her staff to create this this communications plan uh so that there is you know really clear lines of communication between all of our different constituents students parents residents and so um you know my understanding is that that you know was already a goal um of the uh superintendent and so this is really just you know uh getting behind that and having our policy again reflect our uh real world actions which is part of our um ongoing policy audit all right thank you any other comments or discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion passes item b is the second reading of policy 914 relations with the intermediate unit i will
075accept a motion to accept the second reading of policy 914 relations with the intermediate unit line verb moved crisp in second moved and seconded any discussion mr snodgrass um yes this one actually um does have a change that i would like to discuss um because in our uh sorry i'll just introduce it first which is the relations with the intermediate unit and so the delaware county intermediate unit is um who the district works with very frequently for various reasons and we have a board liaison to the delaware county intermediate unit and so um what was discussed at the policy committee meeting and what we tried to reflect the policy uh to uh to show is that the a lot of the the good review work um the uh working with directly with the iu having
076those conversations is going through our liaison and so the policy itself is really focusing on that um and the liaison is will will come to the board we'll um explain the review explain what's going on um really every meeting that they're having and so that's more of a real-time update that we're getting from the dciu whereas our old policy had sort of you know we're going to look at it once a year and um that didn't really reflect either how we wanted to do it um only look at it once a year or how we were and so this changes that um so there was actually a leftover piece though when we made those revisions and it's the last sentence there that says the review shall normally take place prior to the district's approval of
077the proposed iu budget and so i think that what we need to do is just strike that because it no longer fits in um in the policy as we've laid it out which is again really going through the liaison and um and having the liaison report back to the district and have those ongoing conversations so um this is part of the um of the process with policies that's why we don't just read them one time we can take a couple looks at them and this is the second reading so we're not voting on enacting the policy as it's written today i think we can go back we can strike that line and then we can bring it back for a final reading um in two weeks and then at that time we can review and
078see if you know we want to adopt it thank you okay any other comments or discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes item c is the second reading of policy 916 volunteers and 9 16 ar so i will accept a motion to accept the second reading of policy 916 volunteers in 9 16 ar crispin move first and second moved and seconded any discussion or context um this one doesn't need much discussion um it's again it's a second reading of the the policy on volunteers about some really good changes happen to the policy in the policy committee they were then reviewed at our last meeting and no changes have been made or um unless anyone has any changes to propose to the the policy from the last reading to this one so um
079i think unless uh folks have additions or um other revisions we can move forward with this one all right any other comments or discussion all in favor aye any opposed second reading passes in the other items section of our agenda is the dciu mou so i'll accept a motion to approve the dciu m-o-u or m-o-a to participate in the rapid antigen testing rat for covid19 moved in second did any discussion it's a terrible acronym but that's a good okay brad cove and taste testing yeah all right all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes item 12 on the agenda is for public comment the board values public comment as an essential component of school governance that adds to the deliberation of the important and complex matters that come before the board it's an opportunity
080for members of the community to address the board but it is not a question and answer period while we conduct our business in open public meetings according to the sunshine act it is not a meeting with the public this is the second period in our agenda where items that are not on the agenda are able to be commented on residents of the township may in advance of the meeting sign up to make public comment by emailing public publiccomment haverfordsd.net for our board policy you will have three minutes to address the board at the three minute point to time rule sound and you will be asked to conclude your remarks please begin your comments by stating your name and confirming your residency in haverford township if you have any materials to distribute please leave them at
081the end of the board table your name and the topic of your com comments will be recorded in the meeting minutes we had three people sign up for public comment and the first speaker is janice miller good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight i guess i'm supposed to talk loud i don't think this is um janice miller resident of haverford township good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight i would first like to start out with something positive because as we all know when i start to get them up here things go south pretty quick thank you thank you to mr haran and mrs mcgovery for being the type of administrators that always instantly get back to parents and it is much appreciated also i'd like to thank
082dr ruschi who's not here tonight i hope she watches this thank you dr ruschi for raffling herself off at the linwood fun fair my daughter was one of the winners and she had a wonderful time her face lit up when she found out that she was walking to tony ronies and eating with the superintendent little things like that make a huge impact on a children's emotional happiness okay now here's the turnaround i spoke on this topic last october and here i am 10 months later speaking about it again it was my first speech and it was about bullying no calm down no curse words this time i promise lorenz children's are here they've threatened to wash my mouth out with soap before i had to bring children to keep an eye on me tonight bernadette
083uh okay we all know how this is an emotional topic for me so i just always need my deep breath my daughter witnessed something in her class the third day of school minor but disappointing this kid in her class was being bombarded with a few kids making comments about the shirt he chose to wear that day saying why are you wearing this you know he doesn't have a lot of subscribers he was wearing a shirt with a youtuber on it that probably meant a lot to him as you can all remember from middle school and especially the first week what you wear is everything he asked them to stop bothering him my daughter who i'm very proud of i taught her so well stood up and said he asked you to stop these kids for
084this kid's friends then turn around and said that this kid was bullied last year as well okay i'm going to skip apart here move on okay kids have been doing this since the dawn of time but let's be real they add up would you want to go to school or work every day would you want to wake up every day and go to a place that you're not made to feel wanted which leads me into my next point they say bullying starts at home but after watching a few school board meetings this summer i'm wondering if it starts with the school board one meeting over the summer i got a message from a friend in marple a school board member is trashing teachers so i watched the meeting and all i heard was miss vitale
085say the truth about our current field day situations and she even said it is not the teacher's fault now listen i know everyone in town calls me crazy but i know what i heard she then clarified the next meeting because that famous rumor mill i was telling you about so it must have been bad if she felt the need to clarify something that was already pretty self-explanatory but what disappointed me well i have so much more i didn't know what went by that fast real quick but what disappointed me was the lack of unity in the school board i felt like you guys left her out to dry and i wish one of you would have stood up and said we know what she said we support her i will be back to finish my
086speech next time please show some unity so that our kids can do the same thank you thank you the second speaker is alexis pasternack hi good evening um alexis pasternack 609 woodland drive um good evening board members and dr rishi but um i i do actually want to start off on a very positive note as well i was very impressed with our student reps and your ability to public speak because for me to get up here and do this is terrifying and i'm i'm just i'm in awe of it so and the seventh grader as well i really am um so that's amazing to me um so i do want to take a little bit of a turn but i did want to say that always you know and doc and mr haran i did
087camp canadensis that was you know an experience so i feel for i i really got an uh an eye-opener in as to what the teachers are are dealing with so thank you for still putting that together for the students um i did yeah i chaperoned 10 girls very different i have a boy so anyway um so now i'm going to take a turn um last month the school board voted and passed yet another contract in the name of dei this time with the dignity consulting to the tune of almost twenty one thousand dollars the public did not have access to the contract nor cost but to be incurred um prior to the vote but it was still voted on instead the services agreement was linked to the agenda after the meeting one board member stated
088concerned about supplies but that seemed like a problem in pointing out such is really not an integral to student learning we also heard school board members say that you cannot put a price tag on making a child feel as though they belong and that dei needs to be a priority that's that's top i don't know where academics fall the message is clear to me is that feelings are at the forefront open your wallets because we're just getting started i have to assume that everyone here knows that haberford's mission statement and goals are really coming at the direction of the united nations education scientific and cultural organization also called unesco specifically have referred to supporting one of unesco's 17 sustainability development goals goal number four which is about creating a quality education and of course of
089course that sounds great i that's what i want for all children accordingly there are 11 global indicators that will be monitored throughout participating participating countries simply the goal is to transform the entire education system worldwide by twenty thirty and what i would like is for someone to tell me that i'm wrong in my assumption am i wrong and if i'm not wrong can somebody please indicate that in the strategic plan or on the website thank you very much i appreciate it thank you and the third speaker is helene conroy smith hi i'm helene comray smith i live here in haverford township good evening and i like to talk about our children in the past we've had lessons that impacted our children they've impacted previous graduates as well and you decided to use an equity lens
090to go through some of your lessons that lens sometimes divides the community a lesson in seventh grade that taught children suburbs are insufferably white using adult humor using the show adam ruins everything is adult satire and kids were confused and probably not appropriate we had a lesson given to our students two years ago that taught them that you know police officers were somewhat bad they saw video those kids were confused they went home and they discussed things with their parents rather than celebrate being back to school to be in school they were not they were confused our kids we have clubs namely the republican club in the high school that students are being discouraged to join because others are making false claims because they're looking at it through an equity cleanse at lens i think
091the lens needs to be removed as many of you sitting on this board are not truly looking through a lens rather you're using a political ideology to make our tax payments unequitable for the elderly and for and those in affordable housing in our community i'd like to begin with you ms king because you live in the second highest market value home on your block of 31 neighboring homes your estimated value is between three hundred and thirty one thousand nine hundred dollars to seven hundred eighty thousand dollars your mother's home is estimated market value of six hundred sixty three thousand four hundred dollars is it worth it's worth over double than some of the homes in the market only one other home on hazelwood road in oremer has an estimate of 780 000 that's another concern
092for us when you're saying that you are going to make a priority of our tax dollars for a diversity programming and you're saying that it's going to be an equity an environment of caring equity and diversity i want to remind you that not all homeowners have a property value of over three hundred thousand dollars in this town so when you're spending our tax dollars you are spending people's hard earned money and i think the first and foremost thing that we should be discussing are academics i'm happy to see tonight that we are putting money towards a reading program that our kids mostly need and it's gone through k-3 i had two daughters with dyslexia my daughter was in eighth grade high iq and decoding below a second grade reading level that's a disgrace it's criminal
093i took care of it her father and i i sued you i had to sit down and go through lawyers for nonsense our kids deserve academics give them to them thank you um some of the items i heard in public comment tonight were about bullying budgeting issues the work that the district is engaging with with dignity consulting the genesis of our strategic plan and again how some of our budget decisions affect our equity program and i would direct those to the administration to um follow up and reach out and give some information on those topics the next item of the agenda is board reports i'll stop start with mr schwartz sure well as the first one to be able to give a report i'll be able to be to be the first not the last
094i'm sure to give a big congratulations to dr nesbitt who was named the pennsylvania science administrator of the year by pennsylvania science teachers association dr notebook is a wonderful administrator we've heard him speak here in the past his uh his passion for the job is infectious and very well deserved so congratulations turned up we also had a chance at the facilities meeting which i failed to mention during my um previous report to tour the new high school wing and it really is gorgeous the floors in there are are beautiful the workout room is extremely cool there is no partition yet but i mean it is it is very very well done and um sure the kids are going to enjoy hanging out there many of them already have it looks like you know we have
095a real green room a real music room i mean it looks it it's just it's it it is very very well done so look forward to seeing the few punchless items being uh taken care of but overall i think it'll be a very very um positive thing glad everybody had a good if what first day of school and that that's fine yeah um i like many of the other parents here excited back in the school year there's back to school nights coming up and so looking forward to being able to go into the schools interact with the teachers there learn about what's coming up for the school year and just wishing everyone an amazing year going forward thank you um the the finance and facilities meeting um the presentation by crabtree i thought was a
096really nice preview of what is to come and i appreciated getting that extra information um and just kind of learning more about what the process is and what we can expect in terms of their scope and it was nice to get some preview about the the solar information as well so thanks for that presentation um thanks to jr and ken for the tour of the new wing i know it's not like a hundred percent done but it's like very close to being hundred percent done um i suggested school board karaoke but nobody else was having it i just want to put that out there that the chorus room is fantastic yeah nobody was having it i was like this is an amazing room we need school board karaoke um they said no um so i
097just i want to go on record as saying that um but the beautiful facilities um i i'm i can't wait to like see how you all use them and um it was really wonderful so i was glad to to see that um congratulations um as dave said to to dr nesbitt that was really great news to get um what else back to school night was last night it's been busy um back to school night was last night for linwood and i know many of the other schools are having back to school night um this week as well so that was really exciting and lots of other events are coming up soon um i'm hoping to make it to the the coffee and donuts at the m t building but i might have child with me
098so we'll see if we can get up that early and get out the door um but thank you to all the to all the transportation staff and the maintenance staff if i can't make it i just want to make sure i get that on record and saying thank you um and i think that's it so happy back to school everybody it's nice to see our students back and giving us some great great insight to what's going on in the buildings thanks thank you we'll go down to dr um yesterday i was able to attend the delaware county school board legislative council and discuss with other school boards in our county about what is happening right now in the legislature it is a shorter session this fall but um it was a great opportunity to learn
099about things that are happening as well as mr schwartz and i will be going to the psba meeting this saturday to advocate for the proposals that we have in the psba realm reports okay um so i have a few dciu updates um our last board meeting was held on september 7th there's a few approved items that i want to highlight for everyone so the board approved a contract with brain pro brain pop many of you are probably familiar with to provide schools and districts with annual subscriptions to various educational internet internet based products at a discounted consortium rate so brainpop is a pay for service or subscription service um a lot of has a lot of great educational videos i know it's used in a lot of classrooms um so this will allow us access
100at this at this improved rate so that's great news um the board also approved sorry i gotta get my notes straight here i saw something about i'm gonna come back to that one um there was a scripps spelling bee um contract so dciu will be hosting the delaware county spelling bee so we're excited to have that and i also saw something related to a stem summer camp for haverford students um so that our board dciu board approved the contract with harford school district so again exciting things for our district and for the county um and then our committee meetings were held last night um september 14th we received updates on the tech lab that's a student-run new project that was introduced this summer through the innovation grant and student interns were hired there were nine
101of them to clean chromebooks and tablets provide hardware services warranty repairs out of warranty repairs for computers from around the county network wiring projector and smart board maintenance and installation and they serviced over 20 000 units over 10 weeks so this was just nine students so i mean really impressive work um and the other good news for the innovation fund and for the program and its continuation is they made um quite a substantial profit this year um and part of the innovation grant is to you know build and sustain profitable programs for the iu because it is um i can explain another time but you know it's different than a school district than that it's you know trying to raise revenue to support the programs that it um provides to districts so again um the
102it repair shop is a great success i'm happy to report that um we also received an update on the folcroft construction project um you know once you know we're looking at the design process we received a project scope update we looked at the different phases if this all runs according to plan the updates to that site um you know completely modernize and renovate that site for the programs that are there and allow us to continue to expand programs such as practical nursing that would potentially be done um summer of 2025. we are looking at um pretty substantial cost although we are being assured that it can be covered to the tune of 95 million dollars for the renovations so i'm hoping to get more information about that and bring that back to you because that's
103it's not no small potatoes there um and then let's see what else we have we also received an update on the coalition for agency and student voice i believe haverford participated this past year the coalition is a student-driven group there are student forums they have eight meetings that bring students from very various districts across the county together there are future teacher academy meetings there's there are administrator community of practice sessions that are set up they have a symposium that occurs in the fall and there's also a book book study um so i see this as something i hope comes before the board that the district will be in conversation with dciu to see if we can get this up and running for our students they are offering at a cost of four thousand dollars per
104district um which i think for what they're offering is a pretty fair rate um but if anyone needs me to get in touch or make the connection with dciu to get information more information i'm happy to do that um i just also you think this would be a great opportunity because it further supports our diversity and inclusion um goal and again that's to establish culturally diverse and inclusive educational experiences that develop socio-cultural proficiency um so i just wanted to um you know express solidarity with the district and with dr king and other board members who are working to support this this goal just a tag on what other board members have said it's been a great start to the school year i have a third grader who's loving third grade has the most incredible teacher
105and eighth grader god um who is thrilled to be back in school trying out for gold team excited for um clubs starting up so it's just been a great except for the monsoon the first day it has been a great start to the school year all right thanks yeah just really quickly um i think back to school season is my favorite um it's my favorite time of the year we get uh you know you get exciting new classes everyone is happy to be starting these new education journeys and um you know just want to thank everyone who's involved in back to school season um it's you know the administration their staff the teachers the maintenance workers you know the bus drivers everybody um it's been obviously not without any hitches but um but has has
106just been um you know a great i guess week and a half so far um you know for for our students in our whole community i also got to tour the new wing at the high school after our finance and facilities committee meeting and i mean in conjunction with the you know all the classrooms that were added you know the prior year um on the other side of the school it's it's just i want to thank the community for really investing in our students investing in their education because it really just shows how important we take both the academics and you know the um the arts because when when you go in high school it can be it can be difficult and there are some things that you love to go to and some things
107that maybe you don't love as much to go to and um you know we're really trying to reach everyone where they are and where their passions are and what they're good at in their high school and i um i was just so overjoyed to go into that new wing and think you know if orchestra is my favorite thing to do at high schoo in high school look at the investment that our community has just put in orchestra with this new wing and so um it's really um just a testament to um i think you know to the administration to to the board to the community for really uh putting putting giving this to our students and sorry i mean it's just um it's just been wonderful and so i really appreciated getting the tour um
108and uh you know looking forward to um all of the other plans that we have coming into fruition i i really like this one because i was here from the beginning and so i can remember the bids going out and getting the drawings back and um and seeing it from nothing to something has just been wonderful so thank you mr feinberg yeah seeing that high school project coming to fruition has has been awesome so i agree with my board colleagues and thank the community and the taxpayers for the past 15 or so years i've served as chairman of the delaware county school board's legislative council that group meets monthly at the iu and has a member from each of the 15 school boards in the county to try and stay up to date on any
109legislative issues that might be impacting our schools and our taxpayers i'm looking for a transition we've brought on some tow chairs in the last year or two and uh another one started this week hilary fletcher from rose tree media because i'm starting to ride off into the sunset so i have another year there but it'll be a a good opportunity to to have a transition and to get those folks up to speed also add in terms of the this short legislative session there's very few session days before the end of the year the house was back this week the senate comes back next week for a few days but there are so many legislators retiring that a good chunk of what's left in the session is going to be them standing up making their farewell
110speeches which is what they do so we don't really expect anything uh significant to happen before the the end of the year and we'll look forward to the new session starting in january all right thank you and thank you for your leadership there that is a coalition of school boards all of the 15 school boards in delaware county are able to participate and many of them do regularly and i think it's a great way to get the information it's also a platform in which we can share opportunities to advocate for policies that will positively benefit our schools and we have a regular attendee a staffer from senator carney's office who were very fortunate to have that kind of support and delaware county has a lot of representatives who are big advocates for public education senator
111carney is on the education committee right so um we are well positioned there to have that that uh strong relationship with them um so yeah i was able to participate in in that meeting um another meeting that i attended was um we've resumed the psba leadership meetings of monthly zoom of school board presidents vice presidents liaisons this month's topic had a presenter from the pennsylvania department of human services talking about the pennsylvania youth suicide prevention program and resources for schools this is suicide prevention month they were able to present some surveys and data indicating that suicide deaths and considerations after decreasing for a couple of years have trended up again so they gave us a presentation with links to all kinds of helpful resources i will pass them on to our administrators um who i'm
112sure are very familiar with many of them um as a public service announcement i will just share some of the tip lines and and call lines that the new 988 is a crisis support number for suicide prevention and there's a crisis text line the trevor project and safe to say are all resources i think it is helpful to um raise the awareness um reach out to folks you're concerned about alert somebody in the schools let's get some resources together and take care of our kids and prevent any tragedies on a more positive note on this the department of human services runs a high school public service announcement contest which will be rolled out next week and then has a deadline in december but it's a opportunity for students to use their creative talents whether it's
113in video making or art or other multimedia formats to um share a message that will help prevent suicide so something that our our students can look to participate in um as i said i was at uh back to school night last night at the high school there was great energy um beautiful to see the tour the tour was being promoted over the loudspeaker like every 10 minutes like go down and see the new buildings um the new wing in the building and um it was fun to see everybody who's just like oohing and eyeing over that lovely new space it was also exciting to hear the teachers say like what a good start to the school year it's been and how fun it's been to have everybody back my daughter's taking some challenging classes and
114while you hear about the units and the curriculum another thing that came through really clearly was the support that they have like um her calculus teacher has this i love ny that looks like an advertisement for new york city but it's the i love not yet and letting kids like try and and the support the teachers all said before school after school all of that was just a really exciting environment to be in and see how much our staff is dedicated to the success of our students and i am watching my text the girls were in a double overtime soccer game that just unfortunately ended in a loss so tough one heartbreaker over at the at the stadium tonight i will share next item on the agenda is our report on executive sessions we have
115had two executive sessions since the last meeting the first was on september 8th concerning personnel matters and tonight's executive session we discussed two confidential student matters and we also had an information session on residency and the district's legal requirements the next item on the agenda is to report on our next regular public board meeting which will be uh scheduled is scheduled to be held on october 6 2022 at 7 30 p.m in the boardroom of the oakmont administration building and with that i will welcome a motion to adjourn moved second christmas second all right that means adjourned thank you everybody